Andalusian Reflections
In the 10th century C.E, Hroswitha—Saxon princess and earliest
known German poetess—wrote of Cordoba, the caliphal capital of al-Andalus,
that it was: “the ornament of the world.” In the Age of
Hroswitha, Islam and civilization were synonymous. The Abode of Islam had
a brilliant beacon in the east: Sunni Persia, and another, more
spectacular, in the west: al-Andalus.
Christian historians in the Middle Ages spoke of “the two Spains,” one
Christian and the other Muslim. They meant by Spain,
“Hispania”: the Iberian peninsula—Spain and Portugal—not
the political entity called Spain today. There was no doubt which of the
“two Spains” was the greater and more splendid.
Europeans have called the Andalusians Moors and their culture,
Moorish. Our names: Moore,
Morris, Maurice, and Moritz, were medieval forms of “Moor” and “Moorish”.
Muslims,
on the other hand, spoke of“ al-Andalus,”
embracing all parts of Iberia that were Muslim. “Al-Andalus” expanded or receded, as the fortunes of
Islam in Portugal and Spain ebbed and flowed.
Muslims focused not on the phenomenon of the “two Spains” but
on that of the “two banks” [al-‘udwatan]: the northern and southern
shores of the straits of Gibraltar. The
immense cultural, commercial, political, and military power of al-Andalus
lay in the secret its “the two banks.”
When the banks were united or well linked, al-Andalus was the
richest, most formidable land of Europe.
When the “two banks” and their peoples were severed, al-Andalus
weakened and faced defeat before the barbarous armies from “the vast
land” [al-ard al-kabirah]: Europe beyond the Pyrenees.
Al-Andalus
was among the greatest manifestations of civilization Europe has ever
witnessed. The Andalusians were consciously European and cultivated that
identity in their poetry. An
Andalusian poet might depart from norms and speak, for example, of a
beautiful woman with green eyes and red hair, not the traditional Arabian
beauty with black hair and big dark eyes.
Ethnically, Andalusian
Muslims did not differ significantly from their Christian neighbors to the
north.
Andalusian
civilization was tolerant and cosmopolitan. It embraced Muslims,
Christians, and Jews. Its Muslim population was diverse: Iberians [Latins
and Celts], Berbers, Arabs, Teutons, sub-Saharan Africans, Slavs, Persians,
and others. In its darkest times, al-Andalus
knew ugly racial divisions—especially between Berber and Arab—but
succeeded rapidly in Arabicizing its population and weilding them into one
body. Many Christians and
Jews embraced Islam. Maimonides [Musa ibn Maimun]—the great Jewish
physician and Talmudic scholar of Cordoba—is reported to have held that
the greatest danger before an Andalusian Jew was attraction to Islam.
The Muslims of al-Andalus had a sincere and deep attachment to
Islam and Arabic. In practice,
their society was trilingual. It
cultivated a sophisticated Qur’anic Arabic but also used Andalusian
colloquial Arabic and “al-‘Ajamiyah” [ aljamiado],
a romance tongue close to Castillian Spanish but written in Arabic
script.
The appeal of the Andalusian way of life enticed Christians and
Jews and many populations on the perimeters.
Andalusian Christians and Jews took pride in the Arabic tongue and
Arab habits and styles. Several
Andalusian Jews wrote on the virtues of Arabic and held it superior to
Hebrew. Judah
ben Tibbon—a physician and translator of Arabic works into Hebrew—held
that Arabic was the richest language in the world and the best suited for
every type of writing. He felt Arabic—as opposed to Hebrew—was the
supreme poetic language and the perfect language for philosophy, since, by
its nature, it penetrated the hearts of matters,
made the obscure clear, and expounded subtleties.
People
of the Book—especially Christians—were called “musta’ribun” [mozarabes]:
“those who imitate the Arabs.” When
Alfonso VI reconquered large regions of northern and central Iberia in
the 11th century, he had to “Europeanize” the Christians of
his new domains and make them “Latin” Christians again instead of the
Arab Christians they had become. Alfonso
introduced the Roman liturgy in place of the Mozarabic.
He patronized Romanesque art instead of Moorish and spread the
Carolingian script. From the
time of Alfonso VI on, one of
the chief offices of the Church and, later, the Inquisition would be to
obliterate Moorish culture and replace it with that of Latin Christianity.
The
“Arabic speaking” phase of Islamic civilization in Iberia lasted more
than eight hundred years from 711 until after the fall of Granada in 1492.
But Muslim influence in Iberia lasted longer.
Millions of Muslims remained in Iberia after Granada’s fall. Those of them who could not leave freely or flee successfully
were forcefully converted to Catholicism in the 16th century
and forbidden to speak Arabic or keep their Moorish culture.
The Church divided Iberia between Old Christians and New, two
distinct and unequal social classes kept under the Inquisition’s
scrutiny for centuries. Forcefully converted Muslims were called
“Moriscos” [little Moors], while forcefully converted Jews were called
“Marranos” [swine]. Often
Morisco children were taken away to be raised as Christians in monasteries,
cloisters, and other Church institutions.
Large
populations of Moriscos were expelled from the south of Spain and from its
eastern coastal regions and were resettled in the north.
But extreme measures could not kill the spirit of Islam in Moriscan
hearts. They rebelled frequently and continually begged Muslim powers to
come to their rescue. Ultimately, Spain expelled hundreds of thousands of
Moriscos from 1609 to 1614. But
this same act helped break the power and wealth of Imperial Spain, which
relied on the energies and skills of its Moriscos. It marked the end of
Spain’s golden age. Never again would “the Catholic kings” recapture
their lost glory. The French
cardinal, Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, said of the expulsion
of the Moriscos that it was: “ . . . the most audacious and barbarous
counsel recorded in the history of all preceding ages.”
The
genocide of the Moors and Moriscos, Jews and Marranos contrasts to the
Islamic toleration, which had been the hallmark of al-Andalus from its
beginning and one of the secrets of its great achievements. The “Grand
Inquistion”, which began in 1483, was “the first act of united Spain.”
Most European Christians loathed the Inquisition, especially when
Spain—in its Inquisitorial spirit—sought to crush Protestant movements.
Philip II sent his “Invincible Armada” with such an intent
against newly Protestant England in 1588.
Spain’s murderous wars against the Dutch Protestants, which went
on intermittently from 1579 until 1648, were the Inquisition’s work.
European hatred of the Inquisition and reaction against it were among the
reasons for the Protestant Reformation’s success.
The 19th century French historian, Charles, Comte de
Montalembert said: “I grant
indeed that the Inquisition in Spain destroyed Protestantism in its germ,
but I defy anyone to prove that it has not given it throughout Europe the
support of public opinion and the sympathies of outraged humanity.”
Yet the Inquisition’s long and grotesque shadow has hung over the
West for centuries. The bloody Spanish civil war ( 1936 – 1939 ) was in
part the fruit of the brutal division of Spanish social classes that the
Inquisition fostered. Even the ku klux klan, the genocidal policies of
nazi fascism, and Slobodan Milosevic’s policies of “ethnic cleansing”
belong to its bastard offspring.
Andalusian
Muslims were generally conservative.
New developments in the eastern Islamic world were not readily
received in al-Andalus. But
its civilization was not rigid. Rather,
it blended a profound understanding of Islamic tradition with unique
originality and improvision when circumstances required.
Andalusian legal scholars allowed their Christian minorities to
erect new churches, for example, whereas other Islamic lands only allowed
them to keep their old ones.
Cordoba
and other great Andalusian cities were brilliant centers of learning.
Students from as far away as England and continental Europe came
there to study. Roger Bacon
was among them and held that learning Arabic was essential to scientific
progress. Like their counterparts in the east, Andalusians made
intelligent use of waqf properties, which supported free hospitals
and free schools, maintained roads and bridges, quartered armies and
garrisons, provided for
official journeys into Europe to free captives and prisoners of war, and
even provided mercifully for beasts of burden too old to labor. The legal
precedents of Islamic Iberia are an important source of minority fiqh for
Muslims in Europe and America today, and the discipline of minority fiqh
in Islam may probably be said to have had its origin in al-Andalus.
Al-Andalus
produced many of the greatest minds of the Islamic and Arabic sciences.
Their works remain unmatched even now.
Andalusians also mastered mathematics, geometry, the physical
sciences, and medicine. They
put down the foundations of the history of science.
Even Moorish music was an advanced science, Andalusian music being
among the most highly developed music forms the world has known and one of
the sources of our classical music. Andalusians
did not just use their music for enjoyment but also to cure the insane.
Moorish architecture and fine arts developed traditional models with
distinctive originalilty. The
profound developments of Andalusian art may be traced through the
centuries from the great mosque of Cordoba to Granada’s al-Hamra’ in
its silent majesty.
During its illustrious centuries, al-Andalus was powerful on land
and sea. Like Spain in its
golden age, the force of Andalusian arms was based on sea power.
Formidable strength in arms was matched with cultural, economic, and
political prowess. For centuries, al-Andalus enjoyed an economic
prosperity that eclipsed the former achievements of Roman Spain.
Andalusian economic power effected continental Europe, Britain, Ireland,
and Scandinavia and altered earlier trade patterns. The powerful Andalusian economy brought prosperity to those
within and around Iberia, but it triggered unwittingly centuries of
poverty and backwardness in northern Europe by siphoning off the flow of
its traditional commerce.
Throughout
the world, Andalusians were famed as craftsmen, agrarians, and breeders of
horses and livestock. For centuries, the Andalusian Arabian was the finest
horse known to Europe. It was
also the ancestor of the American Indian pony, which descended from horses
the Spanish had brought to the New World. Andalusians mastered
waterworking to a degree not thoroughly understood even today.
They produced brilliant steels and alloys, fashioned excellent
swords and weapons. They
built ships worthy of the Atlantic and mosques and other edifices that
will be admired until the end of time.. They fashioned silks and made
quality textiles, leather goods, ceramics, furnitures, lamps, chandeliers,
perfume burners, and jewelry. It was said that in Moorish Seville, one could find anything
imaginable, even “sparrows’ milk.” The Muslims of al-Andalus
introduced oranges, lemons, cotton, and mulberry trees to Europe and led
the medieval world in an agricultural revolution.
Olive trees last for centuries, and it is said many of those on the
hills of Spain today were
planted by Moorish hands.
The
Spanish and Portuguese identities are linked inseparably to the heritage
of al-Andalus, although, even today, few Iberian historians have been able
to come to terms with that legacy. But they are not the only heirs of the
Andalusian past. The histories of Europe and the Americas are also tied to
al-Andalus in subtle and unexpected ways.
The emergence and dominance of the vikings from the 9th
till the 11th centuries is a profound part of western European
and Russian history. This
complex phenomenon had several causes, but the powerful Andalusian economy
of the time, which sapped economic growth in northern Europe, was among
them. The Norman kingdom of
10th century France, which conquered Britain in the 11th,
is among the critical developments of medieval history.
The Normans originated as Danish vikings whom the Andalusians
defeated on the Atlantic in one of the greatest naval battles in history.
Victory saved al-Andalus from predations but sent the defeated
viking remnants to northern France, where they cut out for themselves
their new “Norman [northman] kingdom”.
In the 10th and 11th centuries, Muslims had a
small governance in Switzerland and eastern France.
Toynbee regarded this presence as one of the crucial developments
of the Middle Ages prior to the crusades. Swiss Muslim power was related
to al-Andalus, directly and indirectly.
The Swiss were the only Muslims ever to make the Roman Pope pay jizyah.
It took the combined armies of Byzantium and continental Europe to
defeat them.
There
seems to have been a friendly connection between al-Andalus and medieval
Ireland. At the time, Ireland was a land of learning and had the most
advanced civilization in northern Europe.
The Andalusian period of Jewish history was Judaism’s golden age.
Arabized Andalusian Jews studied Hebrew grammar and lexicology in the
light of the great Arab grammarians and cultivated other Arabic and
Islamic sciences. Andalusian Jews produced many of the great books of
Judaism. The banishment of Jewry from Spain and Portugal in the 15th
and 16th centuries dealt Judaism a blow from which it never
recovered. Zionism also has
roots in al-Andalus, and it has been said that the Zionist movement should
be dated from the destruction of Andalusian Jewry.
Formerly Andalusian Jews were behind the principal intellectual
developments of Judaism in its post-banishment period.
Andalusians
may have reached America before Columbus discovered the west Indies in
1492 He claimed to have
seen populations there dressed
like Granadan Moors. The discovery of the Americas should not be separated
from the Andalusian background and the
broader relation between medieval Europe and the Islamic world at large.
Moriscos built Columbus’ ships in Moorish dry docks. The theory that the
earth is round was Moorish, not Christian.
Muslims had elaborated the idea and measured the earth’s
circumference seven hundred years before Columbus. Columbus brought an
Arabic translator to the Caribbean—Luis Torres [a Morisco or Marrano]—hoping
to find and communicate through Muslim populations in the Far East which
he imagined he had found. Thus,
Arabic was the first language Europeans used on American soil to try to
speak with the native populations.
Even
the brutal Spanish conquests of native Americans from the late 15th
until the mid 16th centuries must be understood against
the backdrop of the “Moorish problem” of Catholic Spain.
Ponce de Leon’s Caribbean battle cry was: “Santiago mata
Moros” [Saint James, kill Moors]. It
was the old battle cry against the Moors. Ponce de Leon and his Iberian
soldiers had been galvinized by the genocide they and their forefathers
perpetrated against the Andalusian peoples. Spain’s American conquests
enacted the reconquest of Iberia. But it is also said the conquistadores
sought to outdo the great deeds of the Islamic conquerors of the 7th
and 8th centuries. Sometimes
they imitated them, as, for example, when they founded Lima (Peru) and
Popayán (Columbia) after the model of the Arab garrison cities, al-Kufah
and al-Basrah. The spirit,
techniques, and treacheries of the Spanish campaigns in America had been
honed in the long and difficult campaigns against the Moors. Officially,
Moriscos were forbidden to emigrate to the Americas, but in reality they
came in large numbers, especially to Mexico, Guatamala, Cuba, Columbia,
Peru, and Bolivia. Moreover,
the Jesuits spread in Latin America a special type of indolent and
indulgent Catholicism, which the Inquisition had tailored to depoliticize
and control the Spanish Moriscos.
Many
Andalusians—Moors and Moriscos—were able to escape Iberia and the
Inquisition. They had a tremendous influence on the Islamic world, to
which they emigrated. Andalusians helped Arabicize many parts of Africa,
especially what are today the Sudan and Mauritania.
Andalusian soldiers and sailors made up powerful contingents in the
Muslim forces of Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and other Islamic lands. Many of the corsairs and “Barbary pirates” were
Andalusians, some of whom saw themselves not as pirates but as worthy
fighters trying to get back the Andalus their forefathers had lost.
Today,
the legacy of al-Andalus has many lessons for Muslims and non-Muslims
alike. We, Muslims, think of al-Andalus as an Islamic “paradise lost.” In reality, it was not a paradise on earth. It had beautiful
and ugly sides. It
accomplished great achievements but had terrible failures. We must not
romanticize al-Andalus but
ponder what of its legacy was
good and what was bad.
Had it not been for its dark side, al-Andalus would have never
ceased to exist.
Among
the greatest lessons al-Andalus teaches is the nobility of toleration and
harmonious coexistence between peoples and faiths. But it also narrates a tale of oppression and genocide that must be told the world.
Today, the Spanish and Portuguese governments have changed and
taken praiseworthy stances toward Muslims in their countries.
They have also opened the Inquisitorial files.
A modern Tunisian scholar tells of going to Spanish municipalities
and requesting their Inquisitorial records. In some cases, women officials
would bring them to him and hand them over with tears in their eyes,
asking the Muslims to forgive them. The
history of al-Andalus also
shows the absolute necessity of unity and cooperation: a lesson we refuse
to learn. Our fledgling Muslim communities in Spain, Britain, and America
are as divided as they are small and the nation states of the Muslim world
are no better. Indeed, they sometimes work against each other in a manner
that would have shocked even the “petty factional kings” [muluk at-tawa’if]
of al-Andalus.
Umar
Faruq Abd-Allah Wymann-Landgraf actualmente reside en Chicago, Illinois